STEMcoding campers bring robots to life

Thursday

Jul 11, 2019 at 2:22 PMJul 11, 2019 at 6:28 PM

A dozen teen girls turned a science lesson into a friendly competition during a robot race Thursday afternoon at the University of Mount Union.

The activity was part of the STEMcoding camp taking place at the university this week for middle school and high school girls, focusing on computer programming and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

"The girls learn to code in a JavaScript-based language called p5.js and they learn to modify and design their own video games that include accurate physics," Dr. Richelle Teeling-Smith, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and camp teacher, explained. "Besides learning to code, we also toss in some fun, hands-on activities including learning about the physics of soccer, building and racing robots, a life-sized "Angry-birds" sling-shot challenge, and learning about what it is like to major in a STEM field in college."

Morgan Hamilton, a 2019 Mount Union graduate who earned a degree in physics, has been assisting with the camp which started Monday and ends Friday.

Hamilton explained during Thursday’s activity, four teams of girls had an allotted amount of time and parts to build their robots and had limited time to test them and make modifications.

A member from each team then got to use a controller to steer the robot and move it along a track drawn with sidewalk chalk outside of Bracy Hall. Each run through the track was timed, but there were penalties based on how well the robot moved through the track. Hamilton explained an additional second was added each time the robot went over the edge of the track line by more than a wheel.

"The idea is to see who can maneuver their robot the best," she said.

Hamilton said a laptop contained the code that they downloaded into the robot interface and then a controller was hooked up to the robot to help them maneuver it.

"It’s cool that they’ve been able to do it," she said of the process. "They’ve done some coding projects that people have done in college, so I think they’re doing really well."

After each team took their turn, the penalties were added and the winning team was made up of Emma LaMantia, Sydney Endsley and Kendall Biesmann. Endsley, who served as the driver, maneuvering the robot through the track, said it was much harder than it looked. "I tried to figure it out right before we started. I didn’t have any training before that," she said.

Teeling-Smith was pleased with how all the groups did. "They had two hours total to work on their cars, so considering they had such limited time, they did a really great job," she said.

The professor said the camp is a part of the STEMcoding Project, which is an aspect of her research in physics education. "As part of this project, my colleague at Ohio State, Chris Orban, and I design classroom content for integrating coding into high school STEM courses and train teachers across the country in how to use these resources," she said.

This is the second year the camp has been offered at Mount Union, and the Teeling-Smith said it is specifically offered to girls because women are an underrepresented group in many STEM fields — especially computer science, physics, and engineering.

"As a female physicist, I know first-hand how young women can feel pressured to move away from the sciences or technical fields or even might feel intimidated to speak up in class because there are so many other dominate voices present," she said. "In an all-girls environment, girls can feel more confident about speaking up and voicing their ideas and opinions. It is also encouraging to see so many other girls who also have an interest in STEM. They start to realize they are not alone and start to be able to see themselves in a STEM-focused career."

Hamilton said giving girls the exposure to STEM activities is one of the main goals of the camp, and something she didn’t have growing up. "I didn’t know I liked (physics) when I was younger because I didn’t have any exposure to it," she said. "Nobody said, ‘Hey, you can do something like this,’ so I never even considered it."

Hamilton, who will soon begin graduate school at The Ohio State University, said she was happy to see the girls at the camp getting that kind of exposure and getting excited for the STEM activities provided.

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